The Agile Scaleup

Apple Store Best Practices; Near Miss 9/11; Entrepreneurs’ Manifesto; ZogSports

"...insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES: (Huffington Post piece?)

The more technologically advanced our society becomes, the more we need to go back to the basic fundamentals of human communication.
	Angela Ahrendts, Apple

New Best Practices at the Apple Store -- Angela Ahrendts, the former CEO of Burberry, has been running Apple's stores since May 2014 (and compensated almost $74 million). With over 60% of Apple's employees working in these stores, she has chosen to focus on the people side vs. the product side. This Fortune article details why Tim Cook chose her (some excellent insights into hiring top execs and the mistakes to avoid); how she has spent her first year; and some of the routines (you might initiate) she's added to the stores. Notes Fortune:

One of the first things Ahrendts did was institute a now-weekly video communication in which she lays out the game plan. It may seem small, but every Apple store employee I spoke with cited it as a welcome change. The video is a combination pep rally and strategy session, with three key thoughts expressed in a few minutes.

In addition:

...to better understand retail staffers' perspectives, Ahrendts launched Share Your Ideas, an internal app in which they can propose improvements or lodge complaints. (Apple had a process before, but it was mostly ad hoc and not widely used.) Ahrendts says she reads every comment, and within 48 hours someone from her team responds.

Ahrendts also brought the physical stores and online retail together under one team so there was a common customer experience. This article is worth the 3 minutes to pick up more tips on how a new executive makes an impact to an already successful store and brand.

Are Your Online Customers Walking Away? -- Speaking of customer service, your website is like a store. If there are no sales people to help your online customers, they will walk away to a competitor. LiveAdmins, which Gazelles uses, helps businesses proactively greet online customers and engage them in conversation, providing multilingual chat services round the clock, ensuring needs of all visitors are taken care of. Like Ahrendts suggests in the quote above, it's the human connection that matters and this service has helped companies across all industries significantly increase sales and enhance the visitor experience for over a decade.

Near Miss on 9/11 Launches Company (Gazelles case study) -- Robert Herzog was supposed to be in the Twin Towers where 297 of his colleagues perished that day. From this experience he launched ZogSports which has recently expanded to 7 locations with 30 full time and 300 part time employees. My blog in yesterday's Huffington Post shares Rob's 9/11 experience and details how he let go of control and unleashed the growth of his firm - and the disciplines he put in place to allow this to happen. Please take 2 minutes to scan the article for specifics on how he improved his daily huddles, tightened up accountability, and put core values front and center in driving decisions. Thanks to their Gazelles coach Mark Green for bringing Rob's story to my attention.

An Entrepreneurs' Manifesto -- this is the title of my dear friend Steve Mariotti's recently released book. Founder of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), his non-profit has helped over 600,000 young people in low-income communities throughout 10 countries. His beautifully written and highly informative book (every entrepreneur should have a feel for the data in this book) pulls together all the disparate research that shows how entrepreneurs are the economic and innovation engines of society - a must read for anyone trying to garner support for entrepreneurship in their communities. Notes Mariotti:

The most political act a person can ever do is to create a business. To become an entrepreneur has the power to revolutionize lives, rescue families, and forever change communities and countries. I hope you'll enjoy An Entrepreneur's Manifesto, and join the Entrepreneurship Revolution!

Two copies are being sent to GPro and book club members so you can share one with your mayor or university leader. Steve will also be in Dallas at the Growth Summit to sign books and share a few words from the stage. He's one of the true heroes of our time.

TECHNOLOGY:

Align Software puts everyone on the Same Page - Literally! See, in real time every person in your organization and how they are progress on their priorities - alongside how these Align to the Company Priorities! Scale Up your Rockefeller Habits implementation with www.alignwithgazelles.com- on your computer and on your phone.

Better Book Club -- What's your team reading? Increase your books read per team member. Easy, Proven, and in the Cloud at http://www.BetterBookClub.com.

COACHING:

Have you ever wondered if your company would be a good candidate to work with an executive growth coach? Click here to watch Gazelles International President Keith Cupp describes the four most important attributes of successful clients.

The B-Word; The New B; The Bad B; Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters

"...insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

They hire people to tell them what to do; we hire people to tell us what to do.                                                                                            Steve Jobs

Meet the New Boss -- Hitachi has put in place an Artificial-Intelligence (AI) system to manage warehouse employees - we knew the day was coming. And it's already increased efficiency 8%, analyzing various processes, demand fluctuations, employee suggestions, and even the weather to adjust tasks on the fly. Think of it as a smarter iPhone, which manages most of your life anyway! The Agile Scaleup is replacing traditional management with cloud-based systems and then pivoting managers to coaches (to help us deal with our technologies!). Here's a link to more info. Thanks to Peter Diamandis' monthly newsletter for highlighting this new development.

How to Boast...Without Being a Jerk -- publicizing your accomplishments is an important key to success. However, how you do it is critical. This 99U article by Christian Jarrett outlines five specific strategies for bragging effectively:

1. Don't promote yourself unprompted
2. Compare yourself to your own past
3. Use a wingman
4. Is the audience distracted or not
5. Beware of excessive modesty

There are a lot of important details and nuances behind each of these strategies so take 3 minutes to read this article. Thanks to Adam Grant, author of Give & Take, for pointing me to this important piece of research.

How Executive Women Avoid the B-Word -- Anne Fisher, in this insightful Fortune article yesterday, highlights some of the nine distinct ways top women execs get ahead at work - ideas extracted from Carol Vallone Mitchell's upcoming book (Sept 21) titled Breaking Through Bitch: How Women Can Shatter Stereotypes and Lead Fearlessly. Notes Fisher:

In studying the women's careers, and interviewing them in detail, Mitchell found that "these are women being women: assertive, yes; driving, yes; in control, yes; but they have filed smooth the hard edges associated with stereotypical male leadership."

Take 2 minutes to read the article and then order Mitchell's book.

Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters -- I just finished reading Dr. Meg Meeker's huge bestseller Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know. Wow - that was a wake-up call! I've already had several conversations with my wife Julie about changes I need to make (thank goodness she has a therapy fund already). Many of you will meet my daughter Jade (12) at the upcoming Growth Summit - it's her turn to take over from her older brothers in helping out at the event. Remember, children of attendees (up to age 22) are welcome for just the direct cost of meals - $250.

EDUCATION:

Scaling Up Business Growth Workshops 2015

Have Big Plans to Execute in 2015? Learn how to use the proven Rockefeller Habits 2.0 tools and strategies to scale up smarter.

San Francisco, CA - September 24, 2015 
Los Angeles, CA - September 29, 2015
Toronto, ON - September 29, 2015
Calgary, AB - September 29, 2015
Paramaribo, Suriname - September 29, 2015
Oklahoma City, OK - October 1, 2015
Nashville, TN - October 6, 2015
Seattle, WA - October 8, 2015
Johannesburg, SA - October 15, 2015
Richmond, VA - October 29, 2015
Las Vegas, NV - November 3, 2015
Waukesha, WI - November 3, 2015
Dublin, Ireland - November 4, 2015
Surrey, BC - November 20, 2015
Portland, OR - November 5, 2015
Washington, DC - November 4, 2015
Montreal, QB - November 5, 2015
Philadelphia, PA - November 10, 2015
Cedar Rapids, IA - November 11, 2015
Norton, MA - November 11, 2015
Austin, TX - November 12, 2015
Memphis, TN - November 12, 2015
Fort Myers, FL - November  17, 2015
Colorado Springs, CO - November 18, 2015
Indianapolis, IN - November 19, 2015
Dallas, TX - December 2, 2015
Denver, CO - December 2, 2015
San Diego, CA - December 15, 2015

Growth Summit Presented by FORTUNE
Dallas, TX - Oct 20-21, 2015

COACHING:

Have you ever wondered if your company would be a good candidate to work with an executive growth coach? Click here to watch Gazelles International President Keith Cupp describes the four most important attributes of successful clients.

TECHNOLOGY:

Align Software puts everyone on the Same Page - Literally! See, in real time every person in your organization and how they are progress on their priorities - alongside how these Align to the Company Priorities! Scale Up your Rockefeller Habits implementation with www.alignwithgazelles.com- on your computer and on your phone.

Better Book Club -- What's your team reading? Increase your books read per team member. Easy, Proven, and in the Cloud at http://www.BetterBookClub.com.

10 Traits of Super Successful Entrepreneurs; Most Powerful Women; Income Inequality; How to Win

"...insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

You Are What You Publish -- have you set a goal, coming back from vacation, to start producing more content (customers would rather be educated than sold)? Looking to produce a weekly CEO blog? An excellent (and affordable) ghost writer has come available - more below, but first...

How To Win -- as part of Mark Cuban, successful serial entrepreneur, agreeing to keynote our upcoming Growth Summit, we're sending GPro and book club members a copy of his book How to Win At the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It. Enjoy - it's a fun and insightful read (Cuban gets content marketing). Then see you in Dallas.

What separates successful business owners from less successful ones? Speaking of great entrepreneurs, this Gallup article references the psychology of highly talented entrepreneurs that drive bigger, more valuable businesses. The 10 talents of successful entrepreneurs (with links to more details), based on a study of 2500, are:

• Business Focus: You make decisions based on observed or anticipated effect on profit.
• Confidence: You accurately know yourself and understand others.
• Creative Thinker: You exhibit creativity in taking an existing idea or product and turning it into something better.
• Delegator: You recognize that you cannot do everything and are willing to contemplate a shift in style and control.
• Determination: You persevere through difficult, even seemingly insurmountable, obstacles.
• Independent: You are prepared to do whatever needs to be done to build a successful venture.
• Knowledge-Seeker: You constantly search for information that is relevant to growing your business.
• Promoter: You are the best spokesperson for the business.
• Relationship-Builder: You have high social awareness and an ability to build relationships that are beneficial for the firm's survival and growth.
• Risk-Taker: You instinctively know how to manage high-risk situations.

Here's the Gallup article that includes a link to the innate traits.

Most Powerful Women -- yesterday Fortune published their Most Powerful Women in business list. This year there is a record 27 CEOs on the list, overseeing a total of $1 trillion in stock market value. Notes Editor Alan Murray, "the top three:

1. Mary Barra, number two last year, led General Motors through its recall crisis.
    
2. Indra Nooyi, number three last year, heads Pepsi and was ahead of the pack in recognizing shifting views about healthy food.
    
3. Ginni Rometty, who led the list last year, is in the midst of a bold restructuring of IBM, but its steady slide in sales has taken a toll on her ranking."

Take a look at the list of 50, plus one additional #51 bonus choice - might surprise you - she's just 25 year old.

Income Inequality a Challenge for All Businesses -- billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones has decided to speak out about the increasing income gap plaguing countries like the US. Notes Jones in this Fortune article:

This kind of gap between the wealthiest and the poorest will get closed. History shows it usually ends in one of three ways--either higher taxes, revolution, or war. None of those are on my bucket list.

This is THE campaign issue for 2016 in the US with immigration being seen as simply exacerbating the problem. To address the problem of a disappearing middle class, Jones is launching Just Capital and a Just 1000 list to recognize companies that focus on the triple bottom line - social, environmental, and financial. Notes Fortune:

But different perspectives won't alter his adamant belief that the system has gotten out of balance. "There's such an emphasis on making money that we've really taken the humanity out of business," he says. "And part of the reason is that we're not having the right value debate both in society and in our corporate boardrooms."

From my perspective, it's why Brian Dumaine, the Fortune writer who penned this article, and I chose Henry Ford's decision to double wages as the "greatest business decision of all time" (in our book by the same name) - a single decision that propelled Ford into a multi-decade lead and changed the course of the US for generations. Take 3 minutes to read through the article with a surprising book recommendation at the end - I just downloaded it onto my Kindle.

Gazelles Case Study -- and congrats to brothers Rob and Sam Paddock, founders of GetSmarter, for their Entrepreneur magazine cover story in South Africa entitled "Zero to R128 Million Online Trainer Success" (that converts to US$9.4 million). There is an entire sidebar on how they are using the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 to sustain 100% growth per year for the last 4 years as they pursue their BHAG of "improving 1 million lives through education." Here is a link to their short blog highlighting the story.

CEO Blog Ghost Writer? -- reach out to Adriana Gardella at [email protected] - an excellent writer. She has roughly 10 hours/week to support a CEO/company in producing weekly content. Typical rate is $125/hour or by the word (I'm not getting a commission). As marketing guru David Meerman Scott has suggested over and over, if you want to boost marketing, hire a journalist!  


COACHING:

Have you ever wondered if your company would be a good candidate to work with an executive growth coach? Click here to watch Gazelles International President Keith Cupp describes the four most important attributes of successful clients.

TECHNOLOGY:

Align Software puts everyone on the Same Page - Literally! See, in real time every person in your organization and how they are progress on their priorities - alongside how these Align to the Company Priorities! Scale Up your Rockefeller Habits implementation with www.alignwithgazelles.com- on your computer and on your phone.

Better Book Club -- What's your team reading? Increase your books read per team member. Easy, Proven, and in the Cloud at http://www.BetterBookClub.com.

22 Hour Interviews; Onboarding at Atlassian; Appster's Daily Standup; Over 50 Entrepreneur?

"...insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

Turned Entrepreneur After 50? -- top writer Hank Gilman is blogging for Forbes and doing a series of small profiles on folks who became entrepreneurs after they turned 50 (second acts, in other words). Qualify or know someone who does? You can reach him at [email protected].

How Appster Communicates Across 3 Continents -- with $3000 Josiah Humphrey and Mark McDonald founded Australian-based Appster in 2011 (ages 20 and 19 at the time). 48 months later the company is expected to reach 500 employees and $20 million by the end of the year and their 100% annual growth doesn't seem to be slowing. To drive communications with employees working in the US, India, and Australia (and soon the UK), Humphrey and McDonald implemented "daily standups" via Google Hangout and weekly "time travel Tuesday" meetings. This Fortune article details how they structure these meetings, which they gleaned from the Rockefeller Habits.

22 Hour Interviews -- co-founder McDonald attended my one-day Scaling Up workshop in Melbourne this week and shared many of the best practices they've adopted to manage the rapid growth they are experiencing. In addition to monthly management meetings which include 2 hours of executive education; they adopted the Topgrading method of interviewing after experiencing a general 50% failure rate across all their hiring. Since then, using Topgrading's Job Scorecard, screening interviews, TORC reference checking process, and extensive SIDS interviewing process, their success rate has soared to over 90%. Notes this Business Insider Australia article from last year:

The process takes about 12 to 15 hours for entry-level employees, while team leaders and middle managers are interviewed for 22 hours. Senior executives can expect to spend about 150 hours being vetted.

Take 2 minutes to read the article for more specifics on their rigorous hiring process.

Outstanding Publicity -- Australia-based Appster garners a lot of intriguing press around the globe, all part of a concerted PR plan to make their firm attractive to potential hires and underpinning the importance of marketing to the recruiting process. McDonald shared with our audience how the articles leave an impression that Appster is going places which helps them compete for highly sought after tech talent. How is marketing and PR helping you to attract a large number of A-player candidates?

Atlassian's Structured Onboarding Process -- Congratulations to co-founders Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes and the team at Atlassian for being named the #1 Best Place to Work (over 100 employees) in Australia this past week. With 1500 employees and growing - and one in four employees new within the last five months - it's an ongoing challenge to maintain the culture. Key, according to Farquhar, "is the adoption of more structured onboarding programs to deal with the small windows to train staff before the next newcomers arrive." This BRW story about Atlassian's win goes on to note:

Farquhar recently spoke with a former human resources manager at Google who said that over 15 years the top three things that staff valued were firstly challenging work, secondly quality of colleagues and thirdly work environment. "I'd say that's exactly the same at Atlassian," Farquhar says.

Take 1 minute to scan the article for the HR-related systems Atlassian has put into place to maintain a healthy culture. And congrats to Physio Co., another Rockefeller Habits driven firm, for snagging the #2 spot (under 100 employees). Thank you to Gazelles Australian coaching partner Brad Giles for pointing me to this article.

Morning Huddles In School -- speaking of meeting rhythms, Symonds Elementary School in Keene, NH, hosts morning meetings for all K-5 students. Notes this Edutopia article, morning meetings have four key components:

• Greeting: Students and teachers greet and welcome each other.
• Sharing: Students share something about themselves or their lives, and the rest of their peers listen, then ask follow-up questions or offer comments.
• Activity: The group completes an activity that encourages teamwork while re-emphasizing social or academic skills.
• Morning message: Students read a short message from their teacher, usually describing what is to come in the day ahead.

Notes Hazel Jackson, our coaching partner in Dubai who forwarded the info:

It's an amazing twist on the morning huddle. What I really liked is the intension to make it a safe place for learning, that it enhances social skills and creates a predictable start to every day. All things we have in our huddles but perhaps we forget these benefits."

COACHING:

Have you ever wondered if your company would be a good candidate to work with an executive growth coach? Click here to watch Gazelles International President Keith Cupp describes the four most important attributes of successful clients.

TECHNOLOGY:

Align Software puts everyone on the Same Page - Literally! See, in real time every person in your organization and how they are progress on their priorities - alongside how these Align to the Company Priorities! Scale Up your Rockefeller Habits implementation with www.alignwithgazelles.com- on your computer and on your phone.

Better Book Club -- What's your team reading? Increase your books read per team member. Easy, Proven, and in the Cloud at http://www.BetterBookClub.com.